Search

There is potentially tension between world class research and global standards on the one hand and local contexts of engineering and development practice on the other. One aims at scientific status and entirely new knowledge, suggesting just one standard of quality. The other at building products and processes that might bring socio‐economic development, often prizing pragmatism and bricolage. The UK‐funded programme 'Understanding Sustainable Energy Solutions in Developing Countries' (USES) was set up on the understanding that such tensions, if they exist, can be transcended. It was funded by two organisations, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the UK international development agency, Department for International Development. This paper analyses the USES research programme, looking at the processes of its establishment, partnership building, the research undertaken and its early impact. The paper shows that the USES programme goes beyond 'normal' pure versus applied, research versus policy and low‐tech versus high‐tech dualities. Instead, it throws up a complex series of issues that require attention if research is to lead to long standing and sustainable economic and social development. The paper suggests that the concept 'liquid engineering' might be a good way to conceptualise the ways in which the programme, without denying the tensions of dualistic realities, has moved towards a more fluid process to take account of its multiple and complex goals. The programme highlights that progress can be made towards engineering and development being accepted as a legitimate area of engineering theory and practice. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue on the global and the local in engineering and development builds on an earlier JID Policy Arena on reflexive engineering. It extends our thinking by elaborating the notion of 'liquid engineering', which sees engineering and development as messy and improvisational, a borderland hybrid space, composed of objects and practices, and as reflexive and evolutionary. A set of research articles explore this in different ways using a set of case studies, and the policy arena that follows examines liquid engineering in the context of development practice. All the articles suggest that development engineering is at its most successful when embedded locally and informed by global standards flexed or adapted to local conditions. The local through the integration of relevant case studies can then also shape global practices in useful ways. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes important changes in technological innovation in the upstream petroleum industry. It provides evidence that shifts in sectoral patterns of innovation over the petroleum industry's lifecycle from the 1970s up to 2005 were dependent on the dynamics of knowledge base complexity (KBC), a key dimension of an industry's technological regime. Accordingly, observed shifts in innovation patterns are understood to be the aggregated strategic response of industry innovators to changes in the technological regime. The article proposes a quantitative method for exploring KBC and Schumpeterian patterns of innovation, and interactions between the two at the industry level. As the industry evolved, its knowledge base moved to higher orders of complexity creating a shift in the Schumpeterian pattern of innovation. Increased KBC was found to alter Schumpeterian patterns from Mark I toward a ‘modified’ Mark II. Instead of coming predominantly from ‘traditional’ established oil operators, technological innovation was increasingly triggered by a new class of emergent integrated service companies – ‘second tier’ systems integrators of the upstream sector able to cope with increased KBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time, the UK research evaluation system, known as the Research Excellence Framework, considered 'measures' of impact in the 2014 review. Here, we focus on impact case studies that had an engineering and international development orientation. We found that writers of impact case studies commonly chose to employ an ecological modernization (economic, environmental, and social value) discourse to shape value claims. We also found that the type of engineering and international development research that appears in impact case studies tends to be high tech, best-with-best, and exclusive, rather than low tech, humanitarian, and inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural biotechnology is typically analyzed critically by means of a political ecological focus on the science and its ecological implications – agbio science as a radical, and ‘non-natural’, break with ‘normal’ trajectories for ‘new plant science’. Surprisingly, less attention has been paid to a range of key political economic issues, many of which were important in the last big food production technology ‘revolution’, the Green Revolution. This paper will focus on three areas of political economy. First, we discuss the corporate drivers of agricultural biotechnology, and examine whether these drivers have already set the technology so that it cannot be changed. Second, we investigate the present economics and technology of genetic modification in plants, and its possible future. Third, we examine empirical evidence for alternative visions of the technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and technology (S&T) have long been seen as key for development. This paper considers the issue of capacity building in the light of recent reconceptualization of the role of science and technology in development. Reconceptualization suggests that science and technology are better seen as key elements of innovation systems, which are themselves the means of gaining value from knowledge creation; and, that innovation, knowledge and development are tightly knit elements of a system of organisations and institutions that must function coherently for improved knowledge and innovation systems to emerge. Developing such systems requires linkages of many types. The paper describes and discusses the conceptual basis for capacity building interventions, using partnership-based capacity building initiatives in new agricultural technologies from Mali and Egypt. The empirical analysis from both countries shows evidence of research capacity building in the form of recruitment, training of scientific staff and provision of research infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, given the S&T knowledge base, the Malian case illustrates the difficulty of moving beyond basic forms of research capacity building. In Egypt, with significant S&T capacity, there is evidence of organizational and institutional innovation towards broader knowledge, and innovation system development in agri-biotechnology. The role of partnerships, and government as ‘systems-builder’, are shown to be important. Lessons are drawn from these (and other) cases about the relationship between partnerships, S&T and innovation capacity building. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is organizational behaviour in and around the private sector in Tanzania at a time of transition through liberalization and the promotion of private sector activity; how the private sector has re-emerged in the very recent past; how it operates as a group or, more accurately, as a set of groups, and the relationships between its component parts and with other development organizations (notably public actors: the state and aid donors). Within this framework our interest is in how organizational behaviour is mediated and trust is built through the brokering of relations between different organizations which intersect the public and private (and what this means for the public sphere). The article assesses the usefulness of a three-level framework for analysing organizational and institutional transformation, shows that some tentative but modest change is occurring, and that a range of incomplete but positive political processes are happening. We show that institutional development is the weak link in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the relationship between knowledge management and development. First it highlights the ways knowledge has become a major issue and why it matters, arguing the danger of oversimplifying its application as the new panacea for development. The paper then emphasizes the need to understand better institutional and industrial change processes through detailed investigation of production transformations ‘on the ground’. The paper suggest that knowledge-based industrialization demands a change in the ways we think about development and in policies to promote industrialization, focusing on issues of knowledge transfer, local knowledge and institutions, and knowledge management. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]